In this introduction to the special issue on “Illuminating Lives: The Biographical Impulse in Postcolonial Literatures”, we start by situating the genre of biographical fiction, which has become increasingly popular in postcolonial literatures and beyond, in relation to more “traditional” nonfictional biography. We then examine how postcolonial biofiction might be distinguished from its postmodern avatar, and we tentatively circumscribe some of the tendencies that appear to cluster more systematically in postcolonial biofiction than in other types of writings: the focus on individuals — including artist figures — either forgotten or marginalized in traditional history; the use of the biofictional as a veritable mode of knowledge that allows writers and their critics to explore the philosophical implications of examining human trajectories; and the presence of narrative fragmentation, which often problematizes the possibility of ever fully apprehending an individual life.

中文翻译：

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后殖民传记小说的定义

在“照亮生活：后殖民文学中的传记冲动”特刊的介绍中，我们首先将在后殖民文学及其他地区越来越流行的传记小说类型与更“传统”的非虚构传记联系起来. 然后，我们研究如何将后殖民传记小说与其后现代化身区分开来，并且我们试探性地限定了在后殖民传记小说中比在其他类型的作品中更系统地聚集的一些趋势：关注个人——包括艺术家人物——要么被遗忘，要么在传统历史中被边缘化；使用生物小说作为一种名副其实的知识模式，使作家及其批评家能够探索检查人类轨迹的哲学含义；